San Luis to celebrate 30 years as a community

SAN LUIS, Ariz. - San Luis marks 30 years as an incorporated community in a celebration Saturday, but its history goes back even longer.

Its beginnings date back to 1930 when the United States opened a port of entry across from San Luis Rio Colorado, Son., and over the next several decades its population consisted mainly of farm labor families who lived within a two-block area north of the border.

In the 1950s, the population hovered at about 200 residents, most of them farm workers, according to a summary of the community's history that Everardo Martinez, director of Arizona Western College's San Luis campus, and city officials have prepared as part of Saturday's Founders Day observance.

The population jumped up in the 1960s, fueled primarily by the Bracero program that brought Mexican farmworkers and their families to this country.

In 1961, Jose Urtuzuastegui opened the city's first gasoline station, The Flying A, on Main Street, a block north of the border line. And in 1965, Chevron became the first major business chain to locate in San Luis when it opened a service station, operated by Enrique Fletes.

In succeeding years, more business chains turned their eyes to San Luis in response to the prospect of doing business with shoppers from neighboring businesses.

The city's population growth, however, lagged, owing to the lack of available housing. The late 1970s, however, saw the founding of the Comite de Bienestar, a nonprofit housing cooperative that pooled the resources farmworkers and families of limited to develop affordable housing.

In 1977, a group of residents and merchants who called themselves the San Luis Committee for Progress launched a petition drive calling on the Yuma County Board of Supervisors to incorporate their community, according to Yuma Sun archives.

Committee members were dissatisfied with the level of service the community had been receiving from the county, and they saw municipal government as a way for the community to create a police force of its own, upgrade its streets, provide recreational opportunities for youth and build a sewer treatment plant for residents.

In 1979, the board of supervisors approved the petition, making San Luis the county's fourth incorporated community, and supervisors appointed the members of the city's first council: Bruce Jackson, William Hochstatter, Jesus Canez, Marcial Perucho, Elias Bermudez, Josefina Rodriguez and Charles Archilbald.

The new council members chose Rodriguez to serve as the city's first mayor. Succeeding councils continued the practice of choosing the mayor from among their ranks until 1990, when a charter change made the mayor an official directly elected by voters. Tony Reyes, today a county supervisor, became the city's first popularly elected mayor.

At the time of its incorporation, San Luis had about 2,000 residents, but today, according to census counts, it has more than 20,000.

As part of Saturday's Founders Day celebration, the city and Yuma Bike Club are hosting the first Carrera De San Luis Doug Flynn Memorial Ride. The 50-mile race will begin at 9 a.m. on Main Street and end at Plaza Riedel on Juan Sanchez Boulevard.

The race is named for Doug Flynn, the bike club's then-president and creative services manager for the Yuma Sun who was killed in a traffic accident in Somerton in September.  

Then at 1 p.m., the Founders Day Parade will begin at the corner of Juan Sanchez Boulevard and 6th Avenue and conclude at Joe Orduño Park, where a festival and outdoor concert will follow. Tiranos del Norte, a noted norteño music group from Mexicali, Baja Calif., will be the headlining band for the concert, which will also feature the groups Tierra, Four Club and Ritmo Latino.